


Reckless

by orphan_account



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, I wasn’t even aware that required a tag but apparently it does, Internal Monologue, Negatively-Portrayed Wonkru, Past Tense, Second Dawn Bunker (The 100)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-21 03:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17635316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Clarke's reaction to Madi's decision to join Wonkru in 5x06, and how they both move on from there.





	1. Chapter 1

“Let’s go,” Clarke grumbled, trying not to let her frustration show. She grabbed Madi’s uncut hand and moved towards the doors at the edge of the fighting pit, already mentally mapping out their next moves over the following days.

But Madi had gone still, drawing Clarke’s arm taut when they were too far apart and forcing her to stop and glance back.

“Madi,” she admonished, gently as she could manage. “Let’s go.”

Madi ignored her, instead hanging her head and further refusing to move.

“I’m s-sorry,” she began, voice cracking on the last word. “I just thought it would help. I thought I was saving you. I thought I was saving everyone. Like your stories. Please don’t be mad.”

Clarke sighed. With every day that passed, she regretted those stories more. At least, she regretted telling the sanitized versions of them.

_She’s just a kid,_ she’d told herself. _She doesn’t need to know everything, she just needs to know we’re not alone._

And that’s how she’d justified it for six long years, that one part in particular repeating over and over in her head: she just needs to know we’re not alone.

She didn’t know who she was trying to convince.

Still, Clarke knew better than anyone, after Charlotte—hell, after Clarke’s own childhood—that such youthful innocence which she was trying so desperately to preserve in Madi was a luxury none of them could afford.

After all, as soon as Eligius arrived on the ground, they killed of their four people. Out of necessity, yes, but they killed them nonetheless. Then Madi had killed three more in the woods by herself while saving Bellamy and the others.

Within a single day, any sort of façade Clarke had tried to uphold in all that time was shattered into a million irreparable pieces.

And naïvely, Clarke had also deliberately overlooked that Madi never actually had that innocence in the first place.

When they met, she may have been a little girl, but she was a little girl that had already had to hide from conclaves and watch her entire clan die in Praimfaya. She was a little girl who was so conditioned to the violence of Earth that she led Clarke into a bear trap in the hopes of killing her. It was only because she was that little that she didn’t go through with it.

These last six years, Clarke had nurtured Madi, but she had also crippled her. Now, she was much like an injured animal unable to sustain itself in the wild anymore. Because of Clarke’s stories and stupid false hopes.

And Clarke was so very scared that she would be hurt because of it.

She couldn’t say any of that, though. She never could.

Instead, Clarke reached forward and rubbed up and down the girl’s shoulders reassuringly. Seeing Madi about to cry was already starting to constrict her throat, and all she wanted to do was comfort her.

“I’m not mad,” she said eventually, though that was just plainly untrue. She was exasperated and furious with her, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

So she let it go.

Clarke tossed her arm over Madi’s shoulder, and, with the movement, pushed away the many deeper questions she knew lay buried underneath Madi’s anxious expression. “Come on, we can talk about it in the tent.”

After another moment of hesitation, Madi nodded and led the way.

Clarke threw one last glance upward on the way out towards where, in one alcove near the war room, Bellamy and Octavia were talking in hushed voices. She couldn’t hear them, but she could tell by his disgusted expression and tense posture that it was an argument.

She sighed again as she followed Madi out into the darkness. She just didn’t have enough energy to worry about them right now.

Besides, he could handle himself. He didn’t need her, not anymore. They were now each independent heads and hearts within themselves, and they had to go their own separate ways.

Hers was with Madi.

※※※

But Clarke knew what would happen, and as usual, her predictions were right: they didn’t talk in the tent, because they were both too exhausted. The moment Madi’s head hit the small, lumpy pillow, she was out.

On the other hand, as tired as she was, Clarke was still wide awake several hours later, brooding as she stared vacantly at the dusty red fabric draped over her head.

Her mind wandered between many things, but what she kept coming back to was her lie about finally having a talk. Madi probably hadn’t even noticed, but Clarke couldn’t stop thinking about it. Clarke had never truly forgiven her mother for her lies. She didn’t want to make those same mistakes.

Simultaneously, though, she also didn’t see anything particularly terrible about just a single lie. She may have felt guilty for promising something she knew wouldn’t happen, but she didn’t regret it at all. She had never intended to actually have that conversation, but it had gotten Madi out of that horrible room, which was all that really mattered.

Maybe if she said it enough, she’d believe it.

Clarke shook her head at herself and turned over on her side to look at her daughter.

Despite everything that had happened over the last few days, Madi slept easily, as only a child could. She lay on her left side, facing Clarke. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, the blanket drawn snugly against her figure, her small hands clasped around its top edges. A mess of tangled brown hair obscured her features, having been twisted into so many knots after several days left unbrushed in the confusion of everything. Outside of its braid, it looked wild and untamed, much like how it had been when Clarke first found her all those years ago.

Overtaken by warm affection at the sight, Clarke smiled slightly and tucked what hair she could behind Madi’s exposed ear, gradually uncovering her soft, peaceful face. A face that Clarke couldn’t help but envy for its innocence.

Madi barely stirred at her touch, so Clarke continued brushing the strays off for a few moments.

Eventually, she released the last wisp, then leaned in and kissed Madi’s forehead.

Clarke sat back on her half of the cot, noticing with another wry smile that Madi had taken the entire blanket for herself.

Well, it didn’t matter that much: it was warm out here even at this time of night, and Clarke didn’t plan on sleeping yet anyway. Not if she could still do something about the mess Madi had gotten them into.

“Goodnight,” she whispered, then turned and ducked out of the tent, mind set on returning to the bunker to try and negotiate.

Her walk back through the small tent settlement was unnervingly still. Whereas last night the encampment had been bustling with people, alive as a city, now only a few milled around, and those that did kept to the shadowy corners that had once been the alleyways of Polis. In the place of fires were blackened pits made of dying embers and the smell of leftover smoke. Even the few insects that she knew remained from her many treks here in the past were deadly quiet.

It made sense, though. The bugs had probably been scared off by the earlier nuke, and after the desertions and the shootings, the members of Wonkru were no doubt laying low.

Clarke wondered if it was wise to be doing the exact opposite.

Then she remembered that horrible moment, one of the most horrible in her life in a list that also included watching her father die, finding Wells’s body, killing Finn, watching Lexa die, and burning alive in Praimfaya. And it did belong on that list because in a way, she was witnessing yet another death.

This time, though, it was a metaphorical one.

After today, she honestly didn’t know whether that was any better.

The tears had welled up before she realized what happened. Clarke whimpered, angry with herself for being so emotional, then shuddered and shut her eyes. In doing so, though, she blinded herself to something in her path on the ground. She tripped, the object nearly sending her crashing down onto her knees, but caught herself quickly on the side of another tent.

She groaned again, collecting herself. Then she bent down and squinted.

Clarke guessed from its faint, eerie glint that it was a small piece of metal. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. Probably a piece of Diyoza’s drone that had been shot down and shattered upon impact.

Unimportant. She tossed it aside unceremoniously and continued, her head immediately returning to its endless stream of consciousness.

Returning to that moment.

That moment in which a couple seconds had lasted forever, much like how the few feet separating her and Madi might as well have been miles away. She’d broken away from Bellamy and the guards—knowing, with a sinking heart, that it was only because Octavia allowed her to do so, but ignoring the thought as she ran as fast as her feet would possibly allow towards the center of the pit to stop it all. She was forced to watch as she was too slow to stop Madi’s palm being slit, her black blood being mixed with Octavia’s red, Madi looking trustingly up into her eyes even as Octavia painted her cheeks with their mixed blood. She was powerless then, just as she’d been powerless all of those other times when someone she loved died.

But now was not then. She could still try and change things. She could not allow herself to stay that powerless, not if there was still a chance to save Madi.

So the answer was no. It wasn’t wise to be doing this, but ‘wise’ didn’t exactly matter here. Just survival. And not Clarke’s, at that. Clarke only cared about Madi’s survival.

Which, to Clarke’s fury, was nearly always endangered lately, whether by Diyoza’s goons in the woods, by Bellamy when Madi drove him to rescue Clarke, or now by Octavia in her fighting ring of seasoned murderers.

She zeroed in on the makeshift doorway cobbled from the midst of the rubble and made a beeline for it, still lost in thought.

She had to make Octavia listen, no matter how reckless it was, because otherwise Madi would die. And Clarke loved Madi too much—more than she’d ever loved anyone, without a doubt—to let her die. Not like how she had let all the others go, in the end. She wasn’t doing that again.

Clarke ducked beneath the doorframe, trying to navigate in the near-total dark but instead tripping again. This time, it wasn’t because of something in her path: she stumbled because a small stream of ground stone filtered from a crevice above her, the dust particles seeping into her lungs as she was forced to inhale it.

Coughing, she waved her hand in front of her, holding her shirt against her mouth as she did.

After a moment, her lungs cleared, and in the silence, she let her eyes rove nervously over the pit where she now stood. Now that she was alone and able to observe it for herself, she took in many more details than the last few times she’d been in here.

Blades lodged in the fence. Blood everywhere. A throne adorned with skulls looking down from above. The feeling of death hanging over everything.

She wrung her hands. This place was too dangerous. Madi was a child. She didn’t deserve any of this. It was yet another iteration of the same old Grounder story of conscripting children into war rather than letting them have their youth. Much like Aden and all the others, beheaded in their sleep. Much like Anya with Tris, who drowned miserably and torturously in her own blood. Much like Anya with Lexa, who eventually bled from a bullet wound brought from instability within her inner circle. All of them, dead too young. Unfortunate victims of circumstance, molded by war and never given a chance to be anything or anyone different.

Then there were the others, whose fate was in some ways almost worse. If they didn't die, they would up like Octavia herself: originally seconds, now enlisting their own seconds. And so the cycle would continue endlessly, as the bloodlust wanted. Eventually, Madi, corrupted by the mentality of everyone around her into believing any war she fought was just, could enlist someone else's child based purely on the color of their blood, and that parent would be powerless to stop her, like Madi’s biological parents had known.

That couldn't happen to anyone else. And she couldn’t bear to let Madi turn into the kind of person Octavia had.

Clarke crossed the pit and headed toward the side. She paused, thumbing over the blade lodged in the fencing to her right.

She wondered how many people had died in here by this one weapon alone. If any of them were children, or innocents.

If she didn’t succeed, Madi could be one of them.

Clarke punched the fencing abruptly, seething as she felt it weakly ricochet against her fingers. None of this was right.

Truthfully, Clarke didn't particularly care about the wars themselves—wars were a human constant, if her time on the ground had taught her anything—but involving her child enraged her beyond words. And dragging Madi into this also kept her from caring at all about who she killed to stop it. She would kill every last person in Wonkru if need be, no matter their weapons or combat prowess. Nobody hurt her kid and got away with it.

What did worry her about the war, however, was the matter of the valley—her home—which all of Wonkru seemed to be hankering to get, and probably take from her, for that matter, just like Eligius had. From what she’d seen thus far, they were far too unstable to handle a free environment. After all, this was a society shaped by the confinement of its people. What would they do once they actually had freedom?

And what unspeakable things would they do to get there?

Clarke let her gaze fall to the concrete beneath her feet. It was mostly gray, like all concrete, but even in the faint darkness, illuminated only by a single ambient light in the corner, she could see its ugly pallor: twinged red with so much blood over the years that no amount of cleaning could ever hope to erase it.

She shook her head and tore her gaze away, instead looking for the main room. That blood wasn’t an excuse. People had always held Clarke accountable for the things she had done—to a fault sometimes, she felt, but accountable nonetheless—so she had to hold them accountable in turn. Even if that meant challenging a dictator.

Finally, she found the specific door amongst the many, and stalked towards the ramp huffily.

Arriving at the door a moment later, Clarke raised her fist to knock but paused suddenly, deciding to gauge the situation first.

Muffled, unintelligible voices, some of them angry. Shadows flitting back and forth under the crack between door and floor. Shuffling paper. Clearly, this was a strategy session. Bad timing to have a conversation with just Octavia, but she wasn’t going to turn back now.

She steeled herself, then rapped as hard as she possibly could, ignoring the pain blossoming in her knuckles as they hit the metal.

There was the sound of someone striding near her, and then suddenly, the door squeaked open on its hinges and Clarke was yet face-to-face with Miller. Octavia’s perpetual, dutiful bodyguard.

Clarke wrinkled her nose in disgust. Miller had always been principled. He once fought the tyranny of the Ark in his own way by stealing, before even Clarke had turned against them. In Mount Weather, he was one of the four who kept everyone else alive, at risk to his own life. When Pike and his rhetoric descended on Arkadia, Miller aligned himself with Kane rather than his own boyfriend, because he knew what was happening was wrong. He was one of the last people she’d have expected to go along with everything that was happening here. Yet here he was, among the worst of them. Niylah and Jackson too.

“What do you want?” he snapped, poking his head out and staring past her both ways before drawing back and haughtily meeting her eyes.

“Get out of my way, Miller,” she shot back, then frowned as she felt a bout of nostalgia stab her at the words. She couldn’t place exactly why.

Nor did it really matter.

She pushed the thought away and stood on her tiptoes, trying to look over his shoulder. Indra, Cooper, Octavia, and a few others surrounded a flimsy table on the left side of the room, though most of them were now watching her. Littered across the table were numerous stray papers and, on top of them, small figurines and shapes.

They were preparing for battle. She’d suspected, but now it was for certain.

“No,” Miller said, drawing her focus back to him as he shifted his weight to block her line of sight, “I won’t.”

Clarke bristled, though she wasn’t sure whether it was at his words, his movement, or him in general. “I said, get out of my way, Miller.”

“And I said, ‘No, I won’t’, Clarke. So I guess we’re even.” He folded his arms across his chest, and for a moment, they simply stared each other down angrily, letting the silence speak everything for them.

Then, abruptly, a voice spoke from inside.

“Let her through.”

Miller looked behind him, but turned only his head, not his body, so Clarke still couldn’t pass. When he spoke, it was in a confused tone. “Blodreina, you said—”

“I know what I said,” Octavia interrupted. “But now I’m saying let her through. Are you disobeying me?”

He glared at Clarke for another moment, still not moving, but she could tell half of his attention was now focused on Octavia and how far he dared take this. He was faltering.

“Now, Miller, or you know the consequences,” Octavia ordered. The venom in her voice was not to be ignored.

Reluctantly, he stepped aside, but only so far as for there to be the smallest of spaces for her to squeeze through.

Clarke noticed the slight, and, in response, made sure to slam into his shoulder as hard as she possibly could as she passed. Even though it hurt like hell and she struggled to hide the pain on her face afterward, the small bit of satisfaction it gave her was more than worth it.

“Everyone else, gyon au,” Octavia said, nodding pointedly towards the doorway, from which Miller had already disappeared and left ajar. She moved regally towards her throne and settled in it as she watched them start filing out.

They did as they were told, though Cooper shot daggers at Clarke as she left—no doubt she was still angry about her and Bellamy stopping her from shooting more of the defectors. Tough luck. Clarke couldn’t muster even the smallest bit of sympathy.

The door slammed shut behind them with an ominous clang.

Clarke looked towards the table, which had been cleared in the few seconds Miller had obscured her view.

They didn’t trust her.

Understandably, and probably rightly so, but it still stung.

“Well?”

Clarke didn’t deign to look at her. Instead, she pretended to be absentmindedly interested in the single figurine someone had left on the table in their haste to clean up. In a way, she was: it was a child’s, clearly part of a play set. She wondered how it had wound up here.

Maybe Madi would like it, even if she wasn’t that young anymore. She’d only ever had stories. Toys would be an interesting thing for her.

She held it up for Octavia to see. “Can I keep this?”

Octavia frowned, her usual coldly appraising expression momentarily replaced by confusion. “If you want.”

Clarke stepped forward, relaxing somehow as she fell into her old role of measured diplomat. The speech was already forming in her head as she pocketed it and crossed most of the distance between them, stopping short a foot away from the other woman.

“It’s for Madi,” she said, imploring.

Octavia raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

Clarke resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She knew Octavia understood what she meant, but it seemed she was going to dig her heels in stubbornly throughout this conversation and make her say it all aloud regardless.

“Yes, because she deserves a childhood,” Clarke said. She felt her mouth become a thin, angry line as she pursed her lips once before continuing. “A childhood without”—she gestured vaguely around her—“all of this.”

At that, Octavia smiled, but it was an unnerving smile that didn’t reach her eyes and sent goosebumps down Clarke’s arm. She said nothing, however, but simply gestured for her to continue. Clarke drew in a breath, a sudden glimmer of hope spurring her on. Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as she thought.

“You can’t do this,” Clarke went on, “not to my kid. Or any kid. Children deserve to be free”—she swallowed, voice wavering—“like you and I never could be. We can’t make these decisions for them, not when it can be avoided. We can’t force them to fight inherited wars, wars they have no real stake in.”

Octavia drummed her fingers on the arm rests of the throne. The silence had draped over them like a suffocating blanket when she finally said, “Actually, I can.”

Clarke opened her mouth to argue, but Octavia held up her hand, and she stopped. She had to hear the opposing view before she could counter it.

“You lied to me today, Clarke,” she said. “You looked me in the eye and told me Madi was a synthetic nightblood, and even had a whole story rehearsed around it…

“I have to say, I’m surprised. You’ve always been an impressive bluffer, but I never considered you’d be so reckless. Now you’re barging in here, something somehow even more stupid than lying to me.”

Clarke shrugged noncommittally, throwing away the rest of her speech for something short and true. “I need to protect her. I don’t care how I do that, as long as I do it.”

Octavia nodded. “I understand that. I have a child of my own, you know. Actually, that toy used to be his.” She indicated Clarke’s pocket.

Clarke started, torn between surprise and derision by this. Octavia, a mother?

Octavia laughed at her reaction—but it was a short, mirthless sound and set Clarke even more on edge, as if that was possible.

“His name’s Ethan. I’m sure Madi will meet him tomorrow.”

Clarke balled her hands into fists at her sides. She hadn’t missed the meaning behind the words, even if they sounded like harmless polite pleasantries. She was saying “no.” Again.

“Don’t do this.”

But even as she said it, Clarke cringed at how weak and desperate it sounded.

Octavia stood, still keeping the same royal posture as before, even under all her bulky armor and decorative leather padding. She descended the platform and paused, clearly thinking about something, before ultimately reaching forward and resting a hand awkwardly on Clarke’s shoulder.

“Stop fighting it, Clarke. Madi is now Wonkru, and nothing can change that.”

She ignored this. “Yes, it can. You can change it. The war, the pits, the novitiates—all of it’s a choice. This time, make a different one. Please. For my child. For our children.”

When Clarke said the last word, Octavia drew back suddenly and paused, and Clarke’s hopes rose again that she was considering it. A different sort of expression crossed her face for a moment, one that softened her features. Clarke’s eyes widened, the shift sending a jolt through her body, and in that second, all of her arguments vanished.

Because Octavia looked like Madi when Clarke had raced towards her in that pit only a few hours ago. A scared girl, faced with a decision that she wasn’t equipped to deal with, weighed down by so many competing thoughts.

This expression now was an expression of longing, a longing to stop all of the bad things that were happening here. She truly wanted to do it, Clarke could tell.

But in the blink of an eye, that expression was gone, replaced by Blodreina’s empty, unfeeling one. With it, Clarke’s heart fell. That different person peeking out from under the armor was very good at staying hidden, and she wouldn’t come out until she wanted to be found. Clarke knew that all too well from experience.

She heard the answer before Octavia said it.

“If it’s a choice, I choose the fight,” she said.

Everything was falling away. Clarke’s mouth turned dry, her body went numb, blood rushed in her ears—all because of a single realization:

She couldn’t be reasoned with.

There was still so much more she could say if she tried, but it wouldn’t matter. If appealing to her humanity concerning children—their children—couldn’t snap her out of whatever this was, then nothing could.

Clarke needed to go to plan B, as bad of an idea as it was.

She moved to leave, but Octavia wasn’t done with her.

“Stop,” she ordered. That same venom as she used on Miller only a few minutes before somehow compelled her to obey, even though Clarke didn’t and would never follow her or Wonkru.

Octavia forced her to turn and meet her eyes. “Don’t ever question me again,” she said.

Then she waved her hand dismissively, and before Clarke knew what was happening, the guards were back in the room and dragging her out in a show of force, even though she would have walked out anyway. They tossed her in the hallway, and the momentum of it sent her crashing against the railing around the pit.

Clutching her side and breathing hard, she turned herself around weakly with a single arm grappling wildly at the metal, just in time to see the door slam in her face.

All of the fight left her. Exhausted, Clarke let her body go slack and slid down the railing. She looked down at her lap, completely drained, content to just sit there doing nothing for hours. She was tired of fighting people.

But instead, her eyes widened when she saw black blood pooling in her palm, which rested on her left leg close to her waist. Even by the single faint light in the corner, it was unmistakable. She was bleeding.

Shit.

She lifted up her shirt, and sure enough, the clumsy stitches over the shrapnel wound, courtesy of Shaw, had ripped open, probably when they threw her out. She had barely felt it happen, which was a bad sign.

Nothing was ever over around here.

Clarke forced herself to stand, groaning in pain as she did. She began the long walk to the infirmary, where she knew Jackson waited, even at this time of night. Ever since the wounded from the sandstorms, he’d been there nonstop.

Twenty minutes later, Clarke shuffled through the infirmary doors, barely conscious and still clutching her side. Everything was blurry, black spots were appearing before her eyes, and she felt dizzy...

“Jackson…” she managed to mumble, before her knees gave way and she crumpled onto the floor.

As she faded away, she had only a single thought:

Plan B would have to wait.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke recuperates; Madi remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of this chapter focuses on Madi’s past, and this is for the express purpose of developing her more as a character than the show did. I can’t be the only one who liked her a lot more before she got chipped, right?
> 
> Also, you’re forewarned that I am using an abundance of television science here, even if Clarke and Jackson are both medically trained.

Sterile air gusted bitingly across the tips of her fingers, cold as a snowstorm on her callused, marred skin. The chill from it brushing open wounds burned so deep that Clarke could feel it in her bones. She twitched, balling her hands into fists then unclenching them in a loop. The desperate plea of _make it stop, make it stop, make it stop_ pushed all other thoughts out of her mind. 

Clarke flinched violently when a hand suddenly wrapped around her wrist, but, as though noticing this, the owner’s grip slackened immediately. Their fingers still rested on her skin, but she barely felt them; their touch was as gentle as an afternoon breeze. She had a feeling they stayed to reassure her, and for that, even though she had no idea what was happening, she was grateful.

Tentatively, Clarke let herself relax. She crushed the slowly mounting panic about how she couldn’t really open her eyes beyond a small blinding crack, how heavy her body felt, or how on top of that, searing pain was quickly returning all over. She just tried to hang on. There was someone else here now. They could help her.

“Shh,” soothed a soft voice somewhere to her left. “Just tell me what’s wrong. How bad does it hurt?”

Relief positively flooded through her then. She recognized that voice, even after years of not being near the person it belonged to. After all, hadn’t her entire teenage years before lockup been spent hearing it every day in her mom’s OR? In fact, besides Wells and her parents, the owner of this voice used to be the person she saw the most. 

“Jackson,” Clarke croaked, her throat dry. She grabbed his arm back, squeezing tight as she tried desperately to anchor herself. She didn’t know why she felt the need to say it; of course Jackson was here. She’d been looking for him, after all. Still, she was relieved nonetheless.

“It’s me, it’s me,” he said, soothing, “It’s okay.”

Clarke sighed, nodded, swallowed, then thought back to his question. 

Her mouth found the words slowly and arduously. “Hurts… everywhere,” she managed.

She hated how confession-like it sounded, as though she were admitting a criminal vulnerability somehow. She hadn’t been open like this — in any capacity — in a long time. It felt alien, exposed, wrong.

Clarke pictured Jackson nodding seriously at that, then, if the small scratching noise was any indication, making a little note in his chart. “Can you give me a specific place?” he asked gently. “I need to make sure the pain isn’t where it shouldn’t be. I had to stitch you up—and properly this time. The person who did it before tried, but it was a, uh, disaster.”

Despite herself, Clarke laughed. At least Shaw had tried. She couldn’t blame him for being clumsy with it, especially given no supplies, forced to work by the light of the church’s dim candles, and his patient in restraints. Plus he was the pilot, not their doctor, but Diyoza had figured he was the closest she was going to get. 

Until Clarke blew everything and mentioned her mom. Now they had their doctor, and Clarke was once again separated from her only living parent. 

The smile fell off her face.

“Guess it’s just what I deserve,” she said solemnly.

“Yeah, no. None of that nonsense, Clarke. You don’t deserve this pain.” She snorted, and he stopped, probably in exasperation. “Clarke, stop. You don’t. I don’t know what you think you’ve done to deserve it, but you don’t. No one does.”

_But I failed my daughter when I couldn’t stop her getting inducted into this place, her mind objected. And I stood by as they took my mom away. I didn’t fight hard enough for her. And I started this whole thing when I sniped Diyoza’s people, even when I knew I was outnumbered, and because of that Bellamy had to save me and I lost the valley and my home and that peace that I had all these years, and now it’s just another day in another war, just like before._

“That said,” Jackson continued, “you could help yourself out a little, and please stop running around and ripping open your stitches.”

“Yeah,” Clarke said absently. 

But she was lying, of course. She was not about to stop running around. She couldn’t afford to. Since when was rest a viable option in the middle of a war?

_My fault my fault my fault my fault...my war...my kid…_

A small object started tapping on her knee. The reflex hammer, she figured. 

Reflex hammer...she frowned, thinking about what that meant. She didn’t think she had any neurological issues right now, but she supposed she could be concussed from falling down twice, outside the war room then after stumbling into this infirmary. It couldn’t hurt to check, then, she supposed...

“Your pain?” Jackson prompted again.

“I don’t—well, it depends,” Clarke said, straining to pull herself away from her thoughts so she could actually answer him. “A lot in my...my head…” She shuddered as exactly then, a wave of crashing pain rushed through her skull, almost as though she’d invoked it. “And my chest, and my stomach. Everywhere else is a little less.”

“Good, that’s it,” he said, and she heard some quiet beeping and clicks accompanying the words. 

When Jackson next spoke, his voice had suddenly dropped to an urgent whisper, one so quiet that Clarke could barely hear him. “Listen, Clarke,” he began, pausing apprehensively.

She tensed; even with her eyes shut, she knew this room was full of people, so clearly he was about to tell her something she shouldn’t hear. 

Maybe Jackson wasn’t as far gone as he’d seemed the day of the sandstorms, when he and Miller refused to tell her anything. Maybe.

“There isn’t much morphine left anymore. They ordered me to start rationing two years ago, but...I’m going to give you some of what I have anyway. Since it’s you.” 

He paused again, and Clarke felt a warmth surge through her that he still hadn’t forgotten all that time in the OR, back on the Ark what seemed like a thousand years ago. They were friends, or at least they had cared about each other.

“But you have to promise not to tell. You can’t tell _anyone_. One thing you’ll find out about this place, it’s that you can’t tell anyone anything. If you do, _she’ll_ find out somehow. She always does.”

Obviously, the “she” Jackson was referring to was Octavia. Or Blodreina, or whoever she was supposed to be now. 

Clarke tried to shake her head, even though it probably looked like more of an errant spasm. She didn’t want Jackson risking anything for her. She wasn’t worth it, and he didn’t deserve a horrible death in that damn arena regardless. 

“You don’t need to—” But she broke off with a loud hiss when, as though to spitefully refute her words, another wave of pain shot through her. She groaned and released her hold on Jackson.

“You’re getting the morphine. Don’t even try to argue,” he chided over the exhales of the blood pressure cuff he was now tightening on her arm. 

“Fine, then,” she grumbled. “I promise.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

As Jackson’s footsteps faded away, an uneasy silence settled on Clarke’s chest. Her thoughts took over once more. She still hurt; she still couldn’t open her eyes. She was paralyzed and blind—defenseless unlike she’d ever been before—and she hated it. But Clarke had to survive, not be laid up in bed, damn it—

Forget morphine. She had to get back to Madi, no matter how much it hurt. Madi was always more important.

Clarke forced herself, slowly but deliberately, to sit up in her cot. An unsettling groan drew from her all the while, sounding almost disembodied and inhuman. She recoiled when she first heard it, unable to believe that she could make such a nightmarish noise, but pushed through eventually, teeth gritted.

Several minutes later, after she managed that small feat, Clarke swung her legs over the side of the cot in one swift maneuver, leaving the pain to catch up behind the movement.

And catch up it did. Within seconds, searing, stabbing agony shot through her side like a lightning bolt conducting through her veins. Clarke doubled over, her head rushing, her heart racing, her breath catching. 

Hopelessness seeped poisonously through her veins now. How could she make it all the way outside if just getting up was pure torture?

She heard the sound of footsteps again, but louder, nearing her. Frantically, she tried to find something to the side that she could grip as she stood, but her hands clawed at empty air.

Jackson’s footsteps entered the infirmary again, effectively eliminating the last remaining chance of ‘outside’ happening. “Uh, uh, uh, no.”

Clarke groaned. She didn’t want a babysitter. She was an adult, and she had so many problems to deal with that couldn’t wait. She couldn’t afford to be laid up in bed for who knew how long. This was a ritualistic cult, and her daughter was out there alone.

Weakly, Clarke tried to block him with her hands, but this was no use. Jackson pushed her back to where she’d started with almost no effort. He tucked the blanket around her in what she supposed was meant to be gentle and parental, but it just felt like it was suffocating her.

“No escapes allowed on my watch,” Jackson said, also very parentally. He patted her wrist. “I told you that you were getting this medicine, and I _meant_ it.”

Clarke made a face at him, but Jackson merely continued his work. She heard some rustling as she assumed he changed her saline drip to the morphine.

“You should start feeling the effects now.”

He was right, she did feel them. If her eyes hadn’t already been closed, they would’ve been drooping. Sleep was slinking over her, and the air felt much warmer than before, and thicker. Intoxicatingly sweet, somehow.

But before she faded away, Clarke’s mind, unable to let go as always, grabbed onto one last thought.

“Jackson?”

“Hmm?”

“How long was I out?”

She caught the words “ten hours” just as the drugs took her over. Her mind scrambled to stop it from happening—that was far too long for Madi to be alone in this horrible place—but it was too late. 

Sleep pulled her down, and she embraced it.

※※※

Madi dreamt of the end.

In the years since, Madi combed over this day endlessly, obsessively. She catalogued every leaf, every facial expression, every word. Every time she remembered, something new jumped out at her that had merely been in the background before.

And as Madi got older, the curse of hindsight threw everything into stark clarity. Every facial expression was now a story of thoughts, every leaf was now a reminder of the death wave that had ended the world, and every word was now a million unspoken ones, too, buried just beneath the surface.

She dreamt of the last day she saw her mother and father. Praimfaya. “Nomon” and “Nontu”, she called them in her native language. 

That day, Nomon’s gray eyes were narrowed in thought, and Nontu’s blue ones were widened in shock, analyzing every inch of the deteriorating world before him. Nomon’s wild and curly hair hung defiantly out of its clan-mandated braid, alongside Nontu’s slightly wavy ponytail. Both flapped and twirled around, untamed, in the growing wind.

They stood in their hut, just inside the doorframe. The door was ajar. Nontu had draped Madi’s over his shoulders, so now each of her legs hung around one side of his neck; beside the two of them, Nomon held her hand like a lifeline.

The family were motionless as they looked on at the swelling chaos. Small fires were alight throughout the woods nearby, fed by the wind. Trees that weren’t on fire shook violently in the gale, branches snapping off at every angle. Wares from this morning’s market swirled around in the sky and added to the growing tornado. 

People were in disarray—shrieking, crying, running, fighting, hugging, kissing—but no one seemed to be going anywhere specific. There were so many of them, scurrying around like ants. It was more people than Madi had ever seen before. Every single member of the clan, not just those native to this village like her, was here, summoned by the special-occasion foghorn.

Madi’s parents hadn’t believed the wave was coming until this morning when people started to trickle then flood in. Now, the Praimfaya was nearly upon them, and there was nowhere to go.

Outside, everyone suddenly stilled, fast as a doused fire. Even the storm seemed to settle a little.

Madi craned her neck. What was happening?

A black stallion was galloping into the center of the village. Every pair of eyes zeroed in intensely on his completely armored rider, whose coalition brand intertwined with their clan’s brand was visible on the only bare spot of him—his neck—even from this far away. Behind him, a line of equally impressive, specially bred two-headed horses followed behind, all of their riders just as armored as their leader.

Madi grinned widely. 

_He was back._

_They were saved!_

But, as Madi usually found with good news, this was not the case. Instead, it was more of the same. Just like always, everyone else benefitted before Madi or her parents would ever. That’s what being neither warriors nor religious people did to you.

Not to mention, she would later realize this was the moment that sealed her parents’ fate.

“ _Jos honet kru!_ ” the king bellowed at the crowd. “Only a hundred people!”

Nomon and Nontu’s heads whipped toward each other and away again so quickly that Madi thought she imagined it. Nomon’s hand on her tensed to the point where Madi whimpered softly at the grip’s force. She kept the pain to herself, however; Nomon’s face already looked to be hurting so much. She didn’t want to make her feel guilty, too.

It was a moot point, though, since Nontu lowered her to the ground a moment later. He drew closer to Nomon. They started whispering to each other over her head.

“But I wanted to _see!_ ” Madi whined, tugging on his sleeve.

Her father merely patted her head absently. 

Madi huffed. She stomped over to her corner and flung herself facedown on the bed. 

A few seconds later, when nothing happened, she lifted her head up and chanced a look at her parents. They hadn’t even noticed. They were still huddled together, whispering fast.

She stuck out her tongue at them and threw herself down once more.

Let them whisper. She didn’t care. Whatever. 

Several long minutes of not caring later, Madi sat up a second time when Nomon shook her arm. 

“ _Op, let’s gyon au._ Up, let’s go,” she said, voice suddenly sounding very strained. She turned and headed outside.

Madi followed behind her eagerly, so excited that she got to go outside that she didn’t notice the unnatural tone. Nor did she notice the strangeness that Nomon was even letting her go outside in the first place with this many people gathered.

Nomon led her to the crowd’s edges and stopped, peering over all the heads. Nontu followed them a few paces behind.

“Only the best fighters!” the king was saying, booming and powerful. 

In her running haste, Madi quickly passed her mother and headed for the thick of the crowd. But Nontu’s constant warning rang in Madi’s ears before she even made it a few feet in— _never get near enough for them to touch you_ —and she shrank backward nervously. 

Too many people here, too many ways to get cut somehow where any of them, including King Vin, could see. As her parents always said, she had to be careful. One of her neighbors or friends could betray her to the _Fleimkepa_ scouts if they found out about the blood.

“Every clan of the coalition will get their hundred spots,” Vin continued, completely unaware of the child who was the only one backing away as the others crowded in even more. 

Madi sighed with relief. He hadn’t noticed. She rested her head back on Nomon, and relaxed as she wrapped her arms around her. 

Everything would be okay.

Meanwhile, a chorus of boos erupted around them, interspersed with jeers such like “death to Azgeda!” or “down with Sangeda!”

“Quiet! We owe the _Osleya_ a great debt for this. She knows such honor that she offered each clan a chance to live, even when she won the battle for only Skaikru! Now, we need to use that chance. We can’t risk Louwoda dying out, even if it means sharing with the…” he paused and scowled, “...others. But when we are there, we need someone to stop every Trikru assassination, every Boudalan treachery, every Azgeda lie...we need warriors!”

Immediately, the crowd’s malcontent switched to cheers. 

One of the huntsmen cupped his hands and bellowed, “Louwoda! Louwoda! Louwoda!”, a chant which everyone took up in seconds. Even Madi found herself mouthing the words. Its force through the crowd felt important somehow, as though it was the perfect companion of the storm swirling above.

King Vin motioned for quiet again, and the people obeyed. “The royal guard will make up twenty of our hundred, plus me. The rest are to be filled by you. As I decreed, the best warriors only! The only exceptions will be the healer, the infants, and the toddlers. I believe there are seven. That makes seventy-one more slots.”

“What about the other children?” 

Madi jumped. That was Nomon speaking, loud and confident, with a twinge of anger. Madi felt the vibrations of her voice as she talked. 

But _why_ was she talking to the king? Nontu and Nomon were always saying to keep their heads down, but now thanks to her, their clan leader _himself_ was staring at them far too closely.

She turned her head back at a painful angle to survey her mother. Nomon’s eyes were narrowed once more, gray and fierce, unblinkingly focused on King Vin. Nontu paled under his scrutiny, but kept his arm around her shoulder.

When Madi looked back, King Vin’s eyes had turned stormy. “Irrelevant. Coalition and regular Louwoda Klironkru law dictates children five and up are able to go to war. This makes them no longer true children. Any one of them must be treated as a warrior, an adult, in the slots for the bunker. If they are one of the best, among children and adults, then they will go. Otherwise…” his eyes fell to Madi, completely expressionless. 

But Madi knew what he meant. Growing up here, death was always the implication. For everything.

She shrank into her mother’s form even more. She didn’t want to die in the fire wave. She didn’t want her parents to die. She didn’t want the birds or the trees, or the flowers, or any of her few kind-of friends to die, either. 

She wished death would go away and stop looming over her every day of her life.

The king clutched his sword hilt as he looked back up at Nomon. “Do you challenge my ruling?”

Nomon’s arms tightened around Madi. “No.”

“Good.” King Vin turned away to address the entire crowd again. 

But before he could begin, someone else cut in.  
“What about my grandmother?”

Madi’s eyes darted around the people in the general direction where the speaker came from. 

After a moment, she connected voice to face. It was the nice girl, Karina. She was sixteen years old and just like Nomon, her hair was unbraided today.

Karina’s grandmother, Anna, was so old that she was born in the first few years after Praimfaya. Anna was a nice lady, too, and she always told Madi long, fantastical stories when she saw her. Currently, Madi didn’t see her anywhere near Karina, so she was probably back in their house. Lately she had trouble walking, and since Madi wasn’t allowed to make the journey to hers and Karina’s home by herself, it had been weeks since Madi heard one of Anna’s stories.

“She’s the eldest of everyone,” Karina continued. “She knows more history of Louwoda klironkru than we could ever hope to. If anyone can preserve our legacy in that bunker, it’s her.”

Vin’s grip on the sword intensified threateningly. “No.”

“But—”

“I said no!” he snarled. “It’s not realistic. She’s old. She’ll die soon. We can’t waste that spot when a warrior would be of much better use.”

Karina stared at him, jaw hanging open slightly. 

Her friend, Tarik, piped up beside her. “But what about ‘not dying out’? Doesn’t that mean culture, too?”

Vin’s nostrils flared, and in a flash, he jumped down off his steed and stalked toward the two. He drew his sword in a single swift motion as he moved. As he came to a stop, he leveled it against Tarik’s throat. 

The boy’s eyes widened, and he went completely still. Next to him, Karina’s hands wrung the folds of her shirt nervously.

“It seems during my time in Polis for the conclave has made you all petulant,” Vin spat, pressing in until a drop of blood bloomed against the blade. “Would you all like to be reminded the hard way, or will you _stop questioning my authority?_ Hmm, boy? What do you say?”

Tarik mumbled, “Stop questioning your authority.”

Vin turned the sword on Karina. “And you?”

“Stop questioning your authority,” echoed Karina.

Madi’s heart raced as he turned away from them and searched the crowd for Nomon. Time seemed to slow down as Madi once again prayed to Becca Pramheda that no one she loved would die today.

He found her quickly, and everyone scrambled over themselves to break a path for him as he barreled through the throng. Nontu pulled Madi away from her, into his arms a few feet away. The king leveled the sword at Nomon seconds later.

“And you?”

Nomon repeated the words dully.

“Good. Anyone else?”

He was met with absolute silence. Another beat passed, then, after apparently deciding this was adequate submission, the king launched back into his decrees. “All other elders are barred too, unless they can prove they’re better in battle than all their competition.”

“A conclave!” yelled the same huntsman that had started the chant. 

The crowd shouted their agreement, though Karina, Tarik, and a few others just looked resigned.

Suddenly, Madi was being was being pulled back before she knew what happened. Her father’s hand was clasped over her own; this time, her mother was the one bringing up the rear.

The sound of the villagers’ voices quickly faded, replaced by the eerie hissing sound of trees in the wind. They were closer to the house now. And closer to the fires. Sweat trickled uncomfortably down her neck as a reminder.

“Where are we going?” she asked curiously, glancing between them, all the gravitas of moments ago now forgotten. “Home?”

“Shh!” Nontu said frantically. He cast a fearful look behind them, then stopped dead and crouched down to Madi’s eye level.

“Where are we going?” she repeated, voice small.

“Madi, I need you to trust me. I need you to not ask any questions for right now, okay? Everything’s going to be all right, but we need to be very, very quiet right now.”

“But why?”

“Do as your father says,” Nomon said from above them. Her expression was pleading.

“Am I going back to the hole? I don’t like the hole...”

Nomon crouched down, too. She rubbed Madi’s arm soothingly, but her eyes kept darting away to somewhere behind Madi. “No, no, of course not. We promise.”

“But you said I had to be quiet, and that’s like when I have to go in the hole and hide from the bad people, the _Fleimkepa_...”

Nontu shook his head. “No, it’s not like that. All of us have to be quiet now. Not just you. And not because of that. Don’t worry.”

“Okay, but...can you tell me why? Later?”

“Sure, sweetie. Later. For now, though, we’re quiet. Think of it as a...a…” Nontu frowned.

“A game,” Nomon supplied.

“Yes! A game. Think of it as a game. As long as you’re quiet until we say so, we’ll tell you a story later. My stories aren’t going to be as good as Miss Anna’s, but you always like a story, don’t you, Mads?” He poked her stomach teasingly.

Madi giggled. “Yes, I do.”

Nontu stood up. “Okay then.”

She linked his right hand with her left, and her mother’s left with her right. She swung her arms wildly, forcing theirs wearily along with them. Together, they walked off into the fiery sunset, the horizon that was visible through the trees a deepening scarlet, so that Madi didn’t know where the flames ended and sky began.

A few minutes later, the family stopped on the village’s far outskirts, towards the healer’s house. A horse whinnied in terror as they drew level with its small stable, only a few feet away from another burning home.

Nontu took the water pail hooked on the stall’s side and doused what he could of the fire, while Nomon stroked the horse and whispered to it. Madi saw some of the fear leave its eyes as she took its bridle and guided it out of the stall.

“Isn’t that Pat’s horse?” Madi asked, before she could stop herself.

Her mother shushed her again, but her father merely sighed and said, “Pat will be coming with the guard. He doesn’t need the horse, and if we hadn’t been here, she would’ve died. It’s okay.”

Madi nodded. She let Nontu hoist her up into the mare’s saddle behind Nomon. He kicked her sides, and they were off, galloping to the edge of the forest towards the desert in the distance.

Polis, Madi thought excitedly. She always wanted to go, and she never imagined it was possible, with her blood and everything. But here she was.

Then she woke up—in the very place she always wanted to be, but a million years and a lifetime away from that day. 

When Madi lifted her head off the pillow with a groan, she found her face was sticky with tears. She blinked through them blearily, but nothing could erase the fire that killed her parents only hours later burned into her eyes. No matter how much she wanted to forget, each time she dreamed about it, her memory became clearer than ever, her thoughts more measured and less childlike—the opposite of what would be expected with time passing from a childhood memory.

Pale dawn light trickled into the tent. She looked around, but Clarke wasn’t there. Maybe she got up already.

Madi clambered out of bed and wiped her face. It was time to face the day—and forget, for as long as she could, about the day in her dream.

※※※

The next time Clarke woke, to her overwhelming relief, she could open her eyes. The pain was duller, too.

She vaguely remembered a conversation with Jackson—then, with a start, she bolted upright and it connected: he illegally gave her morphine. He risked everything for her. He wasn’t lost to Octavia’s ideology. 

But where was Jackson now? Clarke rubbed the sleep from her eyes, trying to clear her vision and find him—or discern any potential danger in the immediate surroundings. It was dark, with only a dim orange emergency light illuminating the entire infirmary. A few sleeping figures were visible in the other beds, but no one was moving.

Her arm itched. She tried to stay still, but the urge to scratch it only became more intense the longer she held off.

Still sore, she reached over the scratch it, and felt—a paper.

She pulled it out of her sleeve, unfolded it, and held it up to the faint light. A handwritten message stated back at her, vaguely familiar in the way everything about this place somehow was—like the Ark, but not quite.

_Meet me @ generator on lvl 5. 20:00 today_

A trap? Probably. But also possibly not. There might be another ally besides Jackson, and she desperately needed any ally she could get.

She didn’t know the time, though. Clarke squinted and scanned the walls. There might be a clock somewhere.

_19:34._

Well, whether or not this was some kind of trap, time was running out. She had to make a choice, one way or another. And she already knew what it was going to be.

Clarke frowned at the note, and hoped she wasn’t going to regret this.

With all the stubbornness of what everyone had come to expect of her, she yanked the IV out of her arm and forced herself out of the bed. Time to meet her secret ally—or walk right into a trap set by Octavia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another cliffhanger! I hate them, yet I always seem to write them somehow...
> 
> The characters of Karina and Tarik actually appeared in the show and are not my OCs. They were the young couple who tried to flee with Echo, and the only known named members of Madi’s clan besides her. I’m not sure how old their characters were in the show, but in the flashback they’re teenagers who haven’t gotten together yet. I like to think the end of the world wouldn’t stop some people in the bunker from finding each other.
> 
> The other point of the Madi flashback was to remind everyone who started squealing (very annoyingly) “smol Heda!” after 5x09 that it was literally Madi’s biological parents’ worst nightmare that she would become Commander.
> 
> Comments and any sort of feedback are always appreciated!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopewolves.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this was published in June, then I deleted it, then I reposted. Sorry about all the irregularity, guys! I'm just having a difficult time with it.
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


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